Changing channels: why TV has had to adapt

Technological change has swept through broadcasting as surely as it has through music and newspapers

What does Strictly Come Dancing have in common with Mad Men? Not a lot, you might think – and before hearing Joshua Gans speak recently at a seminar on broadcasting, I would have agreed with you. I now think otherwise.

Technological change has swept through broadcasting just as surely as it has through music and newspapers. In the case of broadcasting, however, the process has been more gradual. In the 1970s, British television was funded either by advertising or by the licence fee, and whatever you watched, you watched when it was broadcast. Both these facts changed long before most of us had heard of the internet.

The two technology-based changes have been the emergence of subscription-only channels, and the development of time-shifting technologies to allow TV to be consumed on demand. First there was video but now we can watch the television on the internet, and pause or fast-forward with digital recorders.

Gans, an economist at the University of Toronto and the author of Information Wants to Be Shared, argued that time-shifting in particular was doing interesting things to the economics of broadcasting. First, consider advertising revenue: time-shifting makes it easy to avoid adverts, which undermines the traditional ad-funded model. However, there are some events that most people demand to watch live: sporting events, of course, but also talent shows and reality TV. These are events that our friends and colleagues will talk about and if you don’t watch live, you will miss out. Such programmes remain attractive to advertisers.

Gans argues that a great deal of information has a social context: we want to recommend what’s good and we need to hear recommendations to figure out what to watch. One only need contemplate “Gangnam Style” or Fifty Shades of Grey to see that this is true, but the story is older and more subtle then we tend to acknowledge.

Ponder the resurgence of complex, almost Dickensian story arcs in the unexpected form of the television series. From The Sopranos to Lost, 24 to Breaking Bad, over the past decade or so, the extended, sophisticated narrative has come to a TV near you. Previously only soap operas would attempt such a sprawling form, and then only on the understanding that anyone could switch on at any time and grasp what was happening. The idea of putting on a series that becomes baffling to occasional viewers was regarded as commercial suicide.

But while time-shifting technology has pushed ad-funded television towards live events, it has also provided a foundation for complex storylines. Thanks to DVDs and digital recorders, people can catch up on what they’ve missed. Because the intricate plots are addictive, they are a natural fit with DVD box sets or cable TV.

Game of Thrones or Mad Men rely on social networks just as surely as Britain’s Got Talent does, but in a different way: if the first three episodes were amazing, word will spread and people who initially missed out will catch up. In the first case, the social pressure to watch live is used to foil the ad-skipping time-shifters. In the second case, it’s time-shifting that makes it possible for word of mouth to build.

Some formats sit uneasily with either model. A standalone documentary or sitcom offers neither the addictiveness of the extended series, nor the immediacy of sport or reality TV. The golden age of the sitcom is, perhaps, behind us. And it did not escape my notice that the kind of news coverage that really matters – thoughtful, analytical, investigative – also fits poorly. Perhaps in the future all TV news will take the form of either epic narrative documentaries, or helicopter chases.

6 Comments

Chris says:

Story arcs resurfaced with Babylon 5 in 1994, with it’s 5 year arc, and has spread since then (though few were planned with such long arcs, most last a season at most). This predates time shifters by some years, but was a way to pull in viewers for the long hall.

Netflix’s original series model – House of Cards – further improves the narrative model for TV drama. With no ad breaks, all episodes in a season being release at once, and no obligation to make each episode a specific length, this structure gives more freedom to creators by removing the artificial breakpoints that hamstrung the natural flow of narrative. Now writers and directors can take the time they need in an episode to tell that portion, and know that avid viewers can move straight onto the next, only concluding when the arc is complete. This freer format, released from network tv’s obligations to break every few minutes for ads and its arbitrary cliff-hangers every episode to bring viewers back next week, can serve to create a more natural long-form narrative format which, ironically, will start to resemble something very familiar: the novel.

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I think a big shortfall for TV programs now is the cancellation aspect for these intricate shows. If I don’t think a show will last, I don’t get involved because too many of them get cancelled and your left wondering where it was going. If the networks would promise to at least end all cancelled tv shows with a final episode that describes the arc to conclusion, I might commit more often. You can say that the time shifting solves this problem as I can catch up, but too many episodes behind can be daunting, especially when your friends divulge what has already happened (bad if many people think it sucks) and you can still get cancelled in season 2 or 3 with no closure. I really liked Journeyman a bunch of years back and that was kind of the beginning of the end for me. Fringe’s stupid move requiring you to have Dish Network in order to make up 1 episode before the next one aired, totally turned me off. I haven’t watched it since, and I really enjoyed it.

I think in years to come this will be considered the seminal moment when all the old-media platforms who merely exist to provide a conduit to consumers were disinter-mediated. If you think about a commercial broadcaster, what is their business model? Advert sales – and in that you have to realise that the programmes really are the loss-leader on the adverts. They don’t really care if you watch Downton Abbey, well, only in that it drives you to watch the advert breaks. The BBC is of course different in that they have no commercial interest in anything other than retaining their charter which means they have to make good programmes.
Until the last few years you had to be a big media organisation to deliver adverts into people’s homes before you could afford to deliver programmes, but now that’s not the case. Have you ever wondered why ITV, Channel Four and Channel Five’s on demand services are so hopeless next to the BBC iPlayer? It’s because the new model scares them silly.
I think that increasingly LoveFilm, Netflix, iPlayer etc etc will be the method people choose to consume tele with only a bit of live watching for sports and news. The few pounds a month all of those on-demand services cost is tiny next to what Sky charge you directly and what ITV charge you indirectly (remember, the average family pays around £600 per anum on top of the goods they buy to pay for commercially funded television – and you have no choice over it; it’s more of a tax than the TV license).